


After The Fall

by Ultra



Category: Leverage
Genre: Angst, Coping, F/F, F/M, Family, Female Friendship, Female-Centric, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Gen, Help, Hopeful Ending, Implied Femslash, Implied Relationships, Jail, Team, Team Dynamics, Team as Family, Teamwork
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-11
Updated: 2013-12-11
Packaged: 2018-04-01 04:27:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4005835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ultra/pseuds/Ultra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Nate goes to jail, Sophie is left behind to pick up the pieces. Coping without the man she loves is a lot harder than she ever expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alinaandalion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alinaandalion/gifts).



Sophie never did understand how it helped. Peering down into the glass of scotch didn’t make it any clearer. She had no real interest in drinking the stuff, she could, but that wasn’t the point. Sophie wanted to know what he felt, what it was like to lose yourself in a glass, the heat of the alcohol. It never really seemed to help as much as Nate always said it could. Nothing could really drown out all the feelings. Numb them for a little while perhaps, but that was all.

It was comforting and painful all at the same time to sit here at the bar with his glass in her hand. The familiar smell of the booze and all, it was odd how it made a difference. Sophie might feel ridiculous if she cared enough to do so. She was feeling altogether too much recently. So much for going out into the world to find herself, the truth had been that the only place she ever felt at home was here. It wasn’t really the bar, though McRory’s was nice enough. He was her home, Nathan Ford, the man who had chased her across countries for good reasons and bad. They really had done everything together - taken shots at each other, shared kisses and secrets. He was the first man she had ever come back for.

Sophie Devereaux, and all the aliases she had gone by in her time, was notorious for leaving, for running out when things got tough. She thought about going back for some of the men she had cared for, but never wanted it badly enough. They were not worth the consequences or the trouble. There were new adventures to have, new places to see and people to meet. Above all this, there was Nathan Ford.

He had started off as a challenge really. Sophie supposed he saw her the same way. Nate had been married in the beginning, not to mention he was the enemy in the sense of being the guy out to catch a thief. He never did catch her though. Others fell prey to his schemes and traps, all Sophie got snared by was his looks, his charm, his intelligence. He couldn’t take her freedom, but somewhere along the line, he did steal her heart.

Theirs was a dance from the beginning, and when they had come to be reunited some months ago in Chicago, Sophie couldn’t have been happier. Nate played for her side now, and he had chosen her to be at his side. The rest of the team, they had been chosen for him, but when it came to needing another, to play his own game against a mark he needed to take down for himself, that was when Nate came to find Sophie.

She smiled then, recalling their reunion, swirling the shot of scotch around in the glass. He had a problem and she knew it when she signed up to this team. Stupidly she told herself she could cope with it, maybe help him break the habit. It was the fantasy of a foolish girl, though Sophie ought to have been old enough and wise enough not to believe in such fairytales. She really thought she could be his saviour, but she was wrong.

Poor Nate, he had been through so much. Sophie could hardly blame him for turning to drink in desperation. Sam was dead, Maggie was gone, and life had to look pretty dark lying flat on your back at rock bottom. Right now, it would be easy for Sophie to feel sorry for herself, but that she could not allow when she considered the darkness Nate had seen in his life. Nobody had died, not this time, though she had found out after the events at the docks beside the Maltese Falcon that Nate had been shot. The stupid, thoughtless, wonderful man. He was the biggest contradiction that Sophie had ever met. Of course, she didn’t count herself in the list.

A drop of water on the bar top was the first sign that she was crying. Sophie hadn’t noticed her own tears until then, so caught up was she in thoughts and worries. Of all the people in their team, the first to go to jail from one of their epic cons was the honest man. She had to admit the irony was something to behold, even if there was not a lick of humour in the situation. Bloody irony didn’t even end there.

Sophie and her big need to go and find herself. Here was her home, her family now, and none as much as Nate. It was such a cliché to call him her rock, though honestly he could weigh her down as easily as he could keep her frown drowning at times. Perhaps it was an apt description after all, and yet she had many more for the main man in her life that fitted better. Just like him to get himself taken away the very moment she came home.

“You’re such an idiot,” she grumbled, knocking back the shot in one, slamming the glass onto the bar so hard the next moment that it almost shattered.

“You talking to yourself, or thinking of Ford?” asked a voice.

Sophie couldn’t even pretend to try and find a smile for her visitor. Honestly, she hadn’t even the energy or inclination to turn and look her way.

“Both perhaps,” Sophie sighed heavily. “I wonder if I’d stayed away...”

“Then he still would’ve done what he did,” Tara told her definitely, coming over to sit on the bar stool by her friend without greeting or invitation. “I know I don’t know the guy as well as you do, but after a few months running jobs with this team, it got pretty clear to me that they’d do anything to protect each other,” she explained, not at all bothered by the fact Sophie had yet to even look at her. “Plus Nate has kind of a hero complex for a guy on a downward spiral,” she considered.

Sophie snorted a laugh at that one, though there seemed to be so little humour in the sound it barely earnt its name. Tara hated seeing her like this. Sophie was always a tower of strength, no matter what name she was using, what costume she wore, what kind of con she was pulling. The woman had spine, she had an air of power. For lack of a better expression, Tara would say the chick had balls! It would be easy to accuse her of going soft over Ford, but Tara knew better than to say it. Still, there wasn’t even a way for her to pretend to sympathise. Being in love, it was something any good grifter could fake, but to know what that was like for real, Tara couldn’t be sure. She wondered if she really ever had been in love. Maybe she had but had learnt to bury her feelings deep so far back in the past that she just forgot what it had been like to have them. At least, that was what she told herself.

“They all look to me now,” said Sophie in the silence that had almost become uncomfortable. “Parker, Hardison, Eliot. They expect me to be the leader, to take Nate’s place and... Oh, as if anybody could!”

She fought the urge to fully break down. If she did, she doubted Tara would judge her and there was no-one else here to care, but still Sophie fought to hold it all in. Her supreme acting abilities, that never failed her when there was a mark to be duped or a heist to be completed, always slipped away when real emotion came into play, when Nate was in the middle of all she was thinking, saying, and doing.

“Hey, the Sophie Devereaux I know could run a team like that without even breaking a nail,” Tara told her, bumping her friend’s shoulder with her own. “Besides, I’m here to step in for grifter duties if you need me, so what do you have to worry about?”

It was a dumb question and they both knew it, long before the moment when their eyes met and Tara saw the pain Sophie was trying so hard to hide. That Ford, he really did a number on the world’s greatest grifter. It would be so easy for her to say he wasn’t worth it, but that wasn’t going to work in this case. Besides, Tara was pretty sure that Nate’s sacrifice for his team really did mean he was worth the tears and the hassle, for Sophie anyway. He took the hit, the jail term, all the trouble from Sterling, just to be sure the woman he loved and the team that had become his family all walked free. That was a hell of a choice to make, and it certainly wasn’t one Tara could ever imagine making herself for anyone. Well, maybe for Sophie...

“He still determined to say put?” she asked, glad that as skilled as her friend was she couldn’t read minds yet. “I mean, breaking him out...”

“Nate won’t hear of it,” Sophie shook her head ran her hand back through her hair with a deep sigh. “Stupid, stubborn man. I swear, those Catholic principles of his have a death grip on his conscience.”

“An honest man with morals and chivalry?” said Tara thoughtfully. “What an asshole.”

Her tone was sarcastic, a little playful, just enough of a joke to curve the corner of Sophie’s ruby lips. It was a start, the first step at rebuilding the grifter from the bottom up. Tara hopped down off her stool and rounded the bar. She retrieved the scotch bottle and a second glass, pouring out drinks for the two of them.

“I had this stupid idea that I’d come back, and everything would just fall into place,” said Sophie thoughtfully, fingers interlacing in a demonstration of her words. “I mean, how naive have I become? Honestly? I must have been mad to think it would be that simple.”

“You could not have seen this coming,” Tara sympathised as best she could. “Not even you, the great Sophie Devereaux, could’ve called it. Honestly, I’m not even sure Nate knew he was going to pull that stunt at the dock until it went too far.”

There weren’t many people she felt the urge to be so truthful with, but Sophie had always been different. They weren’t exactly two peas in a pod or anything. Both had admitted in the past they never met a better grifter than each other, but that was where the similarities really ended. Maybe it was the opposites in them that attracted, much like Sophie and Nate. Tara chose not to think about that too hard for fear of feeling the need to run herself and never come back. Sophie needed her right now, and so she would be here. She didn’t really owe her anymore, but that didn’t matter.

“I just don’t know what happens next,” admitted Sophie, picking up the glass in front of her and swirling the contents around. “I mean, I could run the team, I can,” she considered. “But knowing where Nate is, what he’s going through...”

“That man is tougher than he looks,” said Tara immediately. “And this self-pitying, prison widow routine? It’s not a good look on you, Soph.”

Sophie’s eyes widened at the implication as she watched Tara down her drink and pour another.

“Hey, you know me. I just call ‘em like I see ‘em,” her friend told her the moment she noticed her shocked expression. “Now you and I both know that Ford would not want his team of Robin Hood types to go to hell just because he’s in jail. I guarantee he’s working on some super plan to get himself out of there and back to the loving arms of a good woman,” she smirked slightly at her own phrasing. “In the mean time, you gotta get over this. You gotta be Sophie Devereaux.”

She was right in what she said, and Sophie knew it. Tara was rarely wrong about these things. She was a good friend as well as a great grifter. An asset to the team and a shoulder to cry on if things got too tough, it was what Sophie needed right now. No, that wasn’t true. What she really needed was Nate to walk through the door, uninjured and free, telling her it had all been a terrible nightmare. That wasn’t going to happen, and so Sophie had to do what Tara advised. She had to lead the crew, do their job, and bide her time until an answer came to the whole ‘Nate in jail’ situation. She prayed, to a God she barely thought of much of the time, that it didn’t take too long.


	2. Chapter 2

It hadn’t gone perfectly in the beginning. The first job as a new team, with a new dynamic, it was never going to be as straightforward as before. Sophie was the mastermind now, and Tara hanging on as grifter. Though the other three kept the roles they did best, there was just an atmosphere, a frisson, something not entirely describable but very much there. They were missing Nate. They didn’t actually need him to pull a con necessarily, but they missed him, every single one of them. No, the first job hadn’t gone so well.

This was the second go-round, and Sophie was determined to get it right, determined they all would. She gave a rousing speech at the planning stage, channelled so much of Nate’s own style just to be familiar, just so no-one could forget. It was silly really, as if any of them were going to suddenly move on from the old team into the new without batting an eye. They all felt Nate’s absence. Sophie refused to use the word ‘loss’ on account of making it sound as if he had died. The very thought of it made her feel sick.

Honestly, just knowing he was in jail made her stomach roll violently. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t where her man belonged. He was too smart for the cops and too good a man to be amongst criminals and thieves. Sure, in the end he had proclaimed himself to be a thief and she had to agree he had become one, but only for the greater good. Half the bloody time this team were doing the jobs the law ought to be doing. People like Sterling and his precious Interpol ought to be slapping Nate on the back for a job well done, not putting him behind bars.

It was too easy to get caught up in those thoughts. Sophie almost lost concentration a number of times when her head took a turn into injustice and anger. A little prompting from her team set her back on track. She forced her concentration, she got the job done, they got the job done.

“Y’know for a second there I had my doubts,” said Eliot, sipping beer from the bottle in his hand. “Honestly, when Hardison was fumbling with his electronic lock thingy, and Tara’s guy wasn’t showin’ any interest...”

“Hey, is it my fault that the research didn’t tell me the guy batted for the other team?” asked the grifter, giving the hitter a light shove - he only grinned.

“He plays baseball?” asked Parker with a deep frown.

When nobody answered, Hardison made an attempt to field that one, much to Tara and Eliot’s amusement. Sophie didn’t hear a word. She was so relieved the job was done, and so distracted by the clients outside of the door. They looked so happy now. Justice had been done, a father saved from jail time he didn’t deserve and reunited with his loving daughter. There was a lump in Sophie’s throat when she tried to swallow, and tears pricked at her eyes that she had no control over.

She hadn’t cried this much in her whole life before. Every day, Nate being in jail was a constant pain to her. He hardly seemed concerned when she talked to him, always insisting he was where he needed to be. She wanted to grab him and shake him until he woke up and realised how wrong he was. She wanted to grab him and kiss him until it sank in just how much she loved the stupid arse!

“Hey, Soph?” said Hardison then, snapping her from her daze. “You did good, mama. In the absence of... Well you sure helped us prove we could steal a man’s innocence back for him,” he smiled wide.

“Thank you, Hardison,” Sophie replied, putting a hand to his arm. “That means a lot.”

“Yeah, well,” he shifted awkwardly. “Er, if we all done, me and Parker were gonna go catch a movie or somethin’,” he admitted then.

Sophie nodded, said something vague about how they should go have fun. Even she wasn’t really sure what words she had spoken. Everybody had someone, and the one person that was meant for her was somewhere she couldn’t get to him. It made Sophie regret going away more than she even regretted it at the time. Going to find herself was ridiculous. She knew who she was, she was just afraid of what she wanted. Now she had lost the person she cared for most. She was an idiot.

“You sure you’re okay?” asked Eliot as he shifted stools to sit beside her.

“I’m fine,” she painted on a smile the way she always did, but her grifter tricks were not so easy to pull on Eliot Spencer.

Not only did he know her after so long on the same team, he was that bloody observant too. So much for just being a pretty face and a whole host of muscles, there was a sharp mind in that head of his, and Sophie knew it too. The look he gave her certainly proved he wasn’t buying her fake smile at all.

“I will be fine,” she promised then. “It’s sweet that you all care, but I’m a big girl. I’ve coped just fine without Nathan Ford before, and I can do it again.”

Eliot wasn’t so sure he believed that. He didn’t say so, but Sophie could see from the expression that remained on his face, he just wasn’t convinced by her lies. The basics were easy enough to deal with sans Nate. The jobs, the heists, the team bickering and such, that wasn’t really a problem for Sophie. It was knowing that when she turned around he wasn’t there like he always had been, even before the team, even when he was following just to chase her down and try to catch her. His presence had become a comfort on a level she couldn’t really put into words. Sophie missed that more than anything, and nobody on this team was ever going to understand. It was hard to find anyone in the world that possibly could.

“We were gonna...” Eliot inclined his head towards Tara as she returned from the bathroom. “But if you need us to hang around?”

“No, honestly. Don’t spoil your plans on my account,” Sophie insisted.

Eliot nodded once, got up from his stool and looked about ready to leave. He stopped short of actually going, turning back to plant a kiss on Sophie’s cheek.

“You did good. He’ll be proud when he hears about it,” he told her with a wink.

Eliot looked to Tara then but she shook her head.

“Go start the car, I’ll catch up,” she told him, slapping his ass as he walked by.

Sophie laughed lightly at the almost scandalised look on Eliot’s face. Tara was one of very few women he would take that from, especially in public. They’d become fast friends, but Sophie wasn’t blind or stupid. They weren’t going to spend tonight talking that was for sure.

“Seriously, Soph, are you gonna be okay here alone?” asked Tara.

It wasn’t often she looked so serious actually, and her fellow grifter did appreciate it. Honestly, it was enough that she had showed up when Sophie called for her help, not once but twice now. The first time she figured she was owed, but the second, that had to be born out of friendship. Thieves didn’t make friends as a rule, but her and Tara, they went way back. The truth of it was that if Sophie hadn’t been so in love with Nate, and so very much attracted to men, things might’ve been different. Tara certainly wasn’t all that secretive about her feelings, but it just wasn’t what was needed here, or wanted on Sophie’s side.

“You’re a good friend, Tara,” she smiled slightly. “But you have plans for tonight, plans that I’m sure I can guess,” she added with a look that was unmistakable.

Tara wasn’t sure how she felt when she realised Sophie knew exactly what she and Eliot would be up to when they were alone. She hadn’t exactly been subtle about it, Tara rarely was about sex, but then she figured she wasn’t doing anything wrong. Tara liked a good time, Eliot did too. No reason not to spend that time together. Of course, she would drop the guy like a hot potato if Sophie needed her.

“I don’t like the idea of you being alone with all those thoughts in your head,” she sighed, putting a hand on Sophie’s own atop the bar.

That word rang like a bell through Sophie’s head making her want to shudder in the worst way. Alone. She had always thought she coped best in that state until she met Nathan Ford. Whether he was chasing her or working alongside her, Sophie Devereaux, no matter what guise she was under at the time, was never entirely alone. Now was a very different matter, and though he was surrounded by his fellow inmates, she wondered if Nate knew just exactly how she felt.

“I’m not going to be by myself,” said Sophie eventually, snapping out of her momentary daze. “I’ve got a friend coming over.”

Tara raised an eyebrow at the phrasing. Sophie really didn’t have friends, save for herself and the new team, all of which were accounted for. There were men she had been close to at different times, but none of those were going to be an option for as long as the grifter’s heart belonged to Ford. Tara honestly couldn’t think who Sophie could mean and her fellow grifter didn’t seem prepared to share the information.

“Just a friend,” she answered the question that remained unasked. “Now go, catch up to Eliot before he goes off the boil.”

Tara smiled at that as she got back to her feet.

“You kidding me? The best part about guys like him, they’re always battle-ready,” she winked as she stormed out of the bar like a woman on a mission.

Sophie couldn’t help but smile, just a little bitter at being the one without a person to hold her tonight, to tell her everything was going to be okay. She hadn’t lied about the friend coming over, but even in that she was worried, unsure if she had made the right choice in calling. Friends was perhaps to strong a word for what they were, and yet they were most certainly connected and in a fairly intimate way. After all, they were the only two women in the world to be truly in love with Nathan Ford.

The bell above the door chimed, and Sophie looked over, sure that by this time it had to be who she was waiting for, and there she was - Maggie Collins.


	3. Chapter 3

Sophie expected to feel very awkward being alone with Maggie. They hadn’t really done this before. Nate was always there like a buffer between his ex-wife and current girlfriend. The trouble was, there really wasn’t anyone else to understand what Sophie was going through. Perhaps that might seem like a selfish reason to call someone, but on the grifter’s part, she was being completely unselfish too when she made her original phone call.

Maggie would want to know that Nate was in jail, and Sophie refused to let her find out by some other means. She needed the whole explanation, the whys and wherefores of Nate’s arrest. She had to understand it wasn’t his fault, as such, that he had only done what he did for the good of others. Sophie felt the need to have Maggie be as proud of her ex-husband as she was herself, even if that didn’t make any sense.

Maggie’s coming here today was always the plan. After that first phone call, Sophie had to promise to keep in touch before Maggie would let her go. The trouble with that might’ve been that Maggie viewed the world as an honest, decent person, whereas the Leverage team worked outside of the law, even on the wrong side of it much of the time, albeit for the greater good. All that kind of thing faded into the background, the night Maggie called and found Sophie crying her heart out. The grifter had no-one to really talk to. She couldn’t show too much weakness in front of the team, and none of them would feel Nate’s absence as she did, none but Maggie. Nate’s ex had immediately arranged to visit, cleared a couple of days in her calendar and bought a plane ticket. Now here she was, on the opposite end of the couch from Sophie, in Nate’s own apartment. They both held a glass of wine and seemed to find staring into it that much easier than speaking, despite the fact they were here to talk.

“Is the idiot still refusing help to get out of there?” asked Maggie eventually.

Sophie smiled. Here was just about the one person she couldn’t snap at for calling Nate the names she sometimes used for him. She wouldn’t want to try to argue with the other woman that knew him so very well.

“Yes, the idiot is indeed,” she replied in kind. “Legal help wouldn’t really be any good, as I told you. He did break the law, we all did, but even the offer to break him out...”

“Oh, that’s the Catholic thing,” Maggie rolled her eyes. “Not that I don’t respect it, I have beliefs too,” she said definitely with a hand over her heart, “but honestly, you’d think he was repenting for the whole world’s sins sometimes.”

Sophie couldn’t deny she was right, and said as much as they both sipped their wine.

“I, er... I’m assuming you do have a plan to break him out, if he agreed?” she asked then, almost looking ashamed of the question as she seemed to hide in her glass.

Sophie opened her mouth to reply and then thought better of it. She did have a plan. In point of fact, she had about six, but all had holes in them and Sophie knew it. They would need Nate’s help to actually perfect any of the heists that would be sparked by ‘Let’s go steal a Nate!’. She considered a moment and then answered Maggie’s question as best she could.

“The team we have could do it. Not easily, but we could,” she smiled. “If he would ever let us try, that is.”

“He will,” Maggie told her seriously. “Oh, I’m not trying to say I know him better than you, Sophie, but you know, after being married to him for all those years... Well, it taught me that whilst Nate can be very determined when he sets his mind to something, he can change the whole game at a moments notice if properly motivated.”

“I’d like to motivate him,” the grfiter sighed. “My high heels up his backside ought to do it!”

Maggie looked momentarily scandalised before she gave in to laughter and Sophie joined in too. It was perhaps a ridiculous concept, kicking Nathan Ford in the rear just to get him to do what you wanted. Sophie knew the joke was subconsciously deliberate on her point. It stopped her considering the fact that maybe Nate just didn’t love her enough to get out of jail and confront their relationship. It was crazy. As awkward as Sophie knew she could be, there was no way a man would rather stay in prison than figure out a relationship with her.

“Sophie?” Maggie prompted when she was quiet too long, and presumably looking pretty serious. “Please, I want you to feel like you can talk to me,” she said with a kind smile. “I know it’s a little strange, what with me being such a big part of Nate’s past, and you being... well, his future, I guess...”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” she sighed. “I mean, not that I wouldn’t like to be a big part of his future. I certainly always wanted him to be a big part of mine,” she admitted. “It’s just... it’s always been so complicated with him.”

“I imagine in the beginning the complication was much more me than it was Nate,” Maggie smiled knowingly. “Don’t look so worried, Sophie. I know the two of you had some kind of relationship before. Nothing romantic or sexual, Nate wouldn’t dare, but he was always attracted to you, and I’m pretty sure from the look on your face that you felt the same, right?”

Sophie considered her answer carefully. It almost felt like putting her foot into a bear trap if she admitted to being very much attracted to the man forever on her tail over the years. It was crazy enough, she knew, that she had fallen for the ‘enemy’. An insurance man and a thief, it was the most ridiculous pairing to anyone with any sense at all, but it made sense to them... sometimes. Nate and Maggie were a sweet couple, Sophie couldn’t deny from what she had seen of them in years gone by, but now things were very different. Nate was different, more the type Sophie could genuinely see herself ending up with, if the two of them could only figure out the issues that still existed between them.

“All the men that I’ve known, and I’ve known plenty,” Sophie admitted then, “none were like him, not one.”

Maggie reached for the wine bottle and refilled her friend’s almost empty glass.

“Times like this you start to understand why he drinks the way he does,” she smiled kindly. “Sophie, I’m not going to deny Nate is a singular kind of a man, he always was, but he changed. Oh, he’s still a good man, and different to all the rest, but he’s not for me anymore,” she shook her head. “That’s why I’m okay with him moving on to you.”

“Has he moved on to me?” asked Sophie. “Sometimes I’m not so sure.”

Maggie was a good woman, kind and decent. Sophie would like for them to be friends, maybe just because she never did have any real ones before. Maggie was a person that could be trusted, an honest woman as Nate had been an honest man, but she also understood the things the team did and why. She was part of the family without actually being in it. It didn’t have to make any sense, since no other part of this team and their mixed up relationships ever really did. It was just nice to have her here. That didn’t mean Sophie’s question didn’t still stand as relevant.

“Sophie, there’s no question that Nate loves you,” said Maggie definitely. “He may not say it, but he’s shown it already. He went to jail for this family he’s built, you above all,” she told her.

“If he cared as much as he pretends to, he wouldn’t be in jail right now,” Sophie grumbled.

“Believe me, I’d like it better if he wasn’t there too,” Maggie agreed taking a long drink. “But, y’know, that doesn’t change his feelings for you. When Sam... when he was sick,” she started then, clearing her throat before she could go on. “All Nate’s focus went on his son, on his job, on everything else, never me. We broke up, got the divorce, it just had to be done, especially when he was drinking the way he did,” she explained. “Through all that, I knew he still loved me, somewhere deep down.”

“Sometimes I think he still does now,” said Sophie, with a little more bitterness than she meant to show.

She was oddly embarrassed to have Maggie notice. It seemed wrong to be jealous of an ex, when you actually knew the person, and it was clear to everyone that the old relationship was over. Sophie couldn’t help it. She wanted to believe she was all Nate wanted now, that Maggie or any other woman could never get in the way, that nothing else could ever come between them once jail was no longer a factor. She wished she could believe.

“Sophie, me and Nate, we’re always going to have a connection,” Maggie admitted, staring into her wine, determined not to mention Sam again and really break down. “A part of me will always love him, and maybe a part of him will always love me,” she said honestly. “But we’re both moving forward now. He has you, and I... well, I’m moving on too.”

There was something in her voice, and the way she wouldn’t even look Sophie’s way. The grifter knew it was a cover. Maggie was an honest person, she didn’t know the kind of tricks that Tara or Sophie herself would use to stop anyone knowing what they genuinely meant or thought. The truth was that Maggie was moving forward in her life, maybe with a special someone, though she didn’t seem willing to explain further. Sophie chose not to push, it wouldn’t be fair.

“Well here’s to everyone moving forward and finding a little happiness,” she said, holding out her wine glass. “If anyone deserves it, it’s you.”

“Y’know, for a thief and a criminal, you’re a good person, Sophie,” Maggie considered, clinking her glass against the grifter’s own. “To moving forward, and more than that, to you and Nate getting your happily ever after, sooner rather than later.”

Both women were smiling as they drank their toast, but Sophie couldn’t feel so genuinely amused or happy. Talking to Maggie about things, it did help, if only because they were two of a kind when it came to Nathan Ford. Unfortunately, at the end of their evening together, no matter how much they talked it through, Nate would still be in jail, and Sophie would still be wondering what the future held.

She tried not to dwell on it, that didn’t help anyway. For the time being she was just going to have to get used to the loneliness of being without Nate. Maybe it was her punishment for leaving him first, albeit she never intended to be gone for good. Whether that were true or not, the reality was solitude for now, an empty bed and dark nights with no-one to cling to. Sophie didn’t want to have to get used to that for too long. She hoped rather than believed she wouldn’t have to.


End file.
